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The Decision
'Lénary (The Decision) Transcript:' Venus is a great planet to own land on... living on it, however, not so much. Between the large sulphur extraction famr and the thermal mines, the place is one of hte most dangerouse places to work, especially with an outside temperature of roughly 735 K (or 462 C; 863 F fir gte rest if the Conglomerate, depending). Took a lot of work to create habiable colonies on this damned planet, expenses paid in genreations of suckage; my freind Toana says it is 'systemic opreassion from our indentured forefathers'. She also says that we are all descended from criminals given a reprieve in exchange for living here. I read somewhere that they did the same thing on pre-space earth. It would explain how we ended up this way; I mean I don't think I know a single person on thos Gyo'An forsaken planet who isn't crooked. Fugg Gyo'An, why do we worship some rich spacer philosopher who ain't never suffered like we does? Some colonies have their own languages and dialects; I mean besided Conglomerate Common, what do we get? THREE fuggin languages two are basically dialects of the same thing PLUS ConCom. Why? 'Cause our planet is owned by so many places to stuck up to speak ConCom to us! The lights came on at 4:20am standard time, and it was time for class. There we were, 20 of us in second tier education, aged 14-17 all in a class together. I had barely woken up and dressed in time to get to the Learning Level Sector 2A. My stomach was growling for food and the TAmech handed us each a ‘tailor made nutritional breakfast’. Mine was a hot potato and orange juice, not that I was picky, food is food. The TAmech clunked off to the front of the room and turned idle. “Now, class, please open files N15 and P32, and scroll to line 15 and 27 respectively. Today’s lesson will be on Practical Applications of Sulphur” said our teacher, who, we had decided, was at least as old as NASA (I mean NASA! That’s before real space travel even existed). She was about to continue when Te’Na interrupted with, “This food is faeces. When are the printers gunna come back up so I can print me a pizza?” We all looked at the 15 year old future Asteroid Belt Correctional Facility and Entertainment Centre member with disdain. The room hummed with silence; the reason we were on Gyo’An damned rations was because that little faecalform had played a prank that accidently spoiled the food printer’s toner – that’s 300lbs of food ruined. The fuggmongle got away with it to because he’s below punishable age, which is 17 on the Venusian Conglomerates. Clearly understanding our silence for what it was, seething hatred for the pubescent faecalform, he shut his gabber and looked down at the files. The rest of the lesson was fairly dull, with the TAmech breaking the silence with a glitchy sound or two. Te’Na was called to the front and the teacher informed his parent that he would be late. I rolled my eyes at having been asked to stay behind to walk back with him, since there’s always a buddy system in place. After all, who knows when the hull might leak; last thing any of us wants is to be caught burning alive without a chance to be dragged to safety. The rest of the class waved sympathetically at me as I stayed behind awkwardly listing to Te’Na get chastised. Like some sort of creepy dominatrix the teacher slid her glasses down and stared hard through Te’Na… her voice cool and piercing, “Do you think it’s fun to interrupt my class? DON’T ANSWER THAT!” She glared as he attempted to open his mouth, “You have done enough, and I don’t think you’ll be getting anything out of class here. I suggest you start to talk to you family about working the mines, since you won’t be coming to THIS class anymore.” As she said that I cringed, even if he was a brat destroying any hope like that seemed a bit harsh. Then again he did destroy the whole food supply… but he didn’t mean it. As I debated internally I noticed Te’Na begin to tear. “I’m sorry but the other students need to learn. I can recommend some person tutors if you that upset about it.” The teacher finished coldly. As we walked out I looked at him feeling guilt and pity. “Fugg that was harsh.” Te’na looked up at me and bitterly replied, “What do you care? You don’t even like me.” “I don’t hate you, she was mean. Besides, you didn’t mean it… yeah sure we’re all pissed at you but- I mean- that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be given a second chance.” I tried, awkwardly. “I’ve had my second chance.” He said, defeated. The rest of the walk to the main living area was rather quiet and unpleasant. After separating I went to grab a seat at the table my friends and I normally hang. Class normally has a large break in the middle either for extra study of for kids to learn the family trade/ work. As I sat down I noticed Te’Na wandering off into a corridor. I went to get up but Toana stopped me, “Leave it. If he wants to be dumb and break the rules let him.” Looking back I should have gone, maybe I could have stopped all the tragedy that happened… but then again I wouldn’t be who I am if things hadn’t happened the way they did. I guess. At least that’s what I tell myself. The next few days went by nicely and quietly with me only faintly worrying about Te’Na in the background. All though as Toana pointed out I wasn’t his friend, I didn’t even like him. So why did I care? I guess I didn’t. By the end of the week everyone, including me, had forgotten about him. That is until we saw him being rolled out to the incinerator. I remember it like it was carved into my brain… there without a cover rolled his body past us. We were sitting around a table eating MREs from the emergency rations, complaining about the broken food printer, when there on a trolley was Te’Na neck bruised, eyes empty. The pale skin and blueish hue to his face sent chills down my spine. I walked up to the… corpse and looked at it, the people pulling it stopped and looked at me. “He’s dead” I said absently, staring at the body. “Yes, he was found hanging in his room, suicide.” The man in front of the trolley answered. I don’t know why I started to cry, I never liked him but – but it just wasn’t right for someone to die. “Did he leave anything behind?” I asked weakly “Like what?” the man asked “Like, I don’t know a file? A recording? Some sort of reason why?” I croaked. At that point one of my friends came and ushered me back to our table. They sat in silence unable to understand why I was sad, and they couldn’t figure out how to comfort me. I think the fact that they weren’t sad made me sadder. By the end of the week I decided to give my condolences to Te’Na’s family. It took a bit of convincing to get Toana to come with me (yay buddy system!), but I managed to bribe her by promising to cook her a meal or two. When we go to the sector where his house was, I realized he had it bad. The hull had bits that were covered over with tarp, to prevent wires from becoming exposed. I cringed. This area had an accident. Someone had knocked off a bit of the internal hull with cricket ball. The area hasn’t been able to be fixed yet because we have only one mechanic, who’s always busy. This area is the cheapest accommodations, because they’re so small. Oh yeah did I forget to mention none of us own where we live? A young-ish woman opened the door, she’d been crying. I don’t know why but I had brought some casserole with me to give them. There was an awkward silence as the women wiped her eyes, mascara streaking across her cheeks. “Yes?” her voice cracked. “Hi I’m Lenary and this is Toana, we were class mates with Te’Na… um my condolences?” I said starting out creepily chipper and then oddly formal, finishing with an awkward shove of the casserole towards the women. Toana twitched and tried to smile, before she grabbed my shoulder and whispered, “We should probably go.” “No, wait,” the woman pleaded, “I didn’t know my son had any friends, no one has come.” She weakly smiled and took the casserole from my hands and motioned us to come in. We sat awkwardly for a few minutes before she finaly broke the silence. “You were his friends-” Toana cut her off by saying “we were classmates, not friends, I mean not me anyway.” “Oh” the women sighed, and I cringed. “I got along with him alright,” I smiled, “I mean I didn’t know him well but he seemed… fun.” I didn’t want to lie, but I also didn’t want to be an asshole. I glared at Toana, she didn’t even notice. “Well that’s at least something.” The woman winced. “So what brings you here?” I spoke before Toana said something even worse, “We wanted to know if you were okay, and why he um… did what he did.” “My son, wasn’t a happy boy. I guess it runs in the family, my husband wasn’t to great… he left when Te’Na was young. He wanted to get clean of his stim addiction, instead he died of an overdose on Mars. My poor boy, he wanted to fit in so badly. I don’t think he ever figured it out.” Toana rolled her eyes and my sympathy turned to anger as decided my ‘friend’ was an asshole. “Well, um, if you need someone to talk to I’m here,” I said slipping her my IP. I sat in my bed looking at the ceiling. It took me a while, but I came to the conclusion that my hometown was complete jit and also as callous as a miners hands. I decided to look for another place to live. As I opened my tablet Toana crept into my room, peeking around the corner of the open door. “Sup?” “Hi” I said putting down the tablet. “Are you okay? You seemed really upset by Te’Na.” “Yeah… why aren’t you?” “Some people aren’t going to make it, if I was sad every time someone failed, I’d be as depressed as Te’na was. I mean look at the world we live in… we worship some spacer philosopher who never worked a day in his life telling us how works the best thing, and we eat that jit up. We failed. None of us are ever getting off this place. Our parents failed, we’ll fail, and our kids will fail. We die not having accomplished anything.” “Well that was cheery.” I said dryly. “It’s not meant to be cheery, it’s meant to be honest. We should be happy with what we got, with watching the races and saving up for vacations.” “That’s fugging booljit! I don’t want to stay here.” “Oh? Then how will you get off this place?” “I’ll take further” “In what? Cooking?” “Why the fugg not?” “ ‘Cause no place is gonna take you. You gotta be connected, or so fuggin amazin’ you’ll jit gold.” “So? I can get that good.” “How? With what food? The printer?” “No I’ll… um… figure something out.” Toana patted me on the shoulder and as she walked out she said, “You know I hope you do… cause if you do that means I’m wrong, and this time I’d like to be wrong.” I thought about the skills I had, and realized that the only thing I liked and could do well was cooking. So I looked around and did some research until I found a few places that actually had grants and actually had non-pay outsider students. I applied… fingers crossed. The e-mails came back one by one, apologizing for the ‘full quota’ I had begun to lose hope. When not one but TWO e-mails came back, approving me, one from New Dakota on the moon and another from Atlantis on Europa. No contest the Atlantis one had produced some culinary master’s in its time. I sent my acceptance to Nereus Cooking Academy immediately. Now just to figure everything else out… (End part one) Chapter one of story: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Europa_Files/5458295/